Sentencing in soil testing fraud case due Friday

Daniel Tepfer, Staff Writer

Published 8:38 pm, Thursday, June 3, 2010

The owners of a Bethel environmental cleanup company and a Norwalk laboratory are scheduled to be sentenced Friday in Superior Court in Danbury after pleading guilty to defrauding homeowners in Fairfield, Newtown and New Fairfield out of thousands of dollars.

Ronald Passaro, 45, president of Envirotech of Fairfield County, and Michael Zubarev, 40, president of Brooks Laboratories, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree larceny, attempted first-degree larceny, and conspiracy to commit larceny as the case was to go to trial.

They are scheduled to be sentenced on the charges by Danbury Superior Court Judge Susan Reynolds.

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Senior Assistant State's Attorney Tamberlyn Conopask said, under a plea agreement, the two men face suspended sentences with the condition they make restitution to their victims. She said the judge will also levy restrictions on the two men's businesses so that they can not continue fraudulent activities.

According to Conopask, in June 2007 a former Envirotech employee told state Department of Environmental Protection officials that Zubarev was falsifying test results that indicated high levels of soil contamination after Passaro's company removed the tanks from properties in Newtown, Fairfield and New Fairfield. Passaro then used the phony results to persuade the homeowners to pay for soil removal work that wasn't needed.

The employee, a former office manager, told investigators she "could not sleep at night knowing what (Passaro) was doing to his clients."

Property owners Howard and Karen Sulzman, of Weldon Woods Road in New Fairfield, and Michael and Elizabeth McGrath, of Fairfield, paid more than $34,000 and $29,000, respectively, to have supposedly tainted soil removed after Passaro's company took out their oil tanks in 2005.

The third set of alleged victims, Sarah and James Naphen, of Mount Pleasant Road, Newtown, became dissatisfied with Envirotech's performance and hired another company to finish work on their property in 2006.

Passaro subsequently sued the Naphens for the more than $15,000 balance he claimed was due.

The ex-employee said after initial test results came back showing no soil contamination in each of the three cases, Passaro would call Zubarev and request a second analysis be done. Each time, Zubarev allegedly responded with a second result indicating high levels of contamination. A check of laboratory records showed no second tests were ever performed, according to the court affidavits.